getting nowhere...slowly

Though the end is in sight--grades are due by Friday, and I'm down to two stacks of final papers--I don't see how I am possibly going to have a revised version of my exam prospectus into my committee. I'm stuck on "ideology." I thought that maybe starting to write through my problem here might help, though I'm not entirely hopeful (many long walks have not solved it).

If I'm using Bill Readings and his concept of the "bureaucratic University of Excellence" as my framework and lens through which to read and critique cultural studies and critical pedagogy within composition/writing classroom, and Readings argues that "excellence" is non-ideological, as it has no content: "It has not external referent or internal content" (23). So, according to Readings, the University of Excellence is a non-ideological space, but I disagree. This is where I'm stuck. While I believe Readings can provide a powerful framework for my particular critique of CS and CP, how do I address a University of Excellence that is in my mind ideological??? Readings idea is based on the notion that corporations are non-ideological. I'm not sure I understand this entirely.

Excellence has no content. It is the thing we all agree upon without knowing what it is. It is not a criterion. It is empty. So it is actually the discourse of "excellence" that is empty? The use of the word is meaningless, but the representation is the University of Excellence, which seems to have content. Corporatized content.

I'm getting nowhere.... Try back later.

movie break

According to this blog it would seem I take more breaks than I spend time doing work. That is the thin slice of life that is blogging though.

Dawn and I went to see Friends with Money. It was alright. Definitely a wait-for-the-DVD-and-rent-it type of film. But for me it was kind of nice to be reminded of how great my life really it. I mean, the film had no plot, was completely dialogue driven, which I often like. And, in this case, the dialoge was real. And it was nice to go sit for an hour and a half and listen to everyone else's problems. I thought the movie was a bit heavy-handed in terms of its portrayal of male/female (supposed)differences. But again, sometimes it is just about escaping into the conversations of people whose lives are way more f-ed up than mine.

Okay, avoiding grading, for a bit. Must get to it. Friday looms large.

grading break

What makes the best break from grading stacks and stacks of papers? I am sure I must ask this question each semester.

Check email and sign a petition against the tracking of phone calls by the NSA.

Have a horribly terrifying experience where a big, scary looking spider is crawling on my mouse just as I'm about to put my hand on it. Have to figure out a way to catch spider; work through my fear so I don't just slam a book down on it; bring the spider outdoors--heart racing and feet moving fast.

Blog, "play" on the computer, but this ususally does not end up feeling like a break, and then I end up needing another break...

Talking on the phone.

Doing dishes, laundry, picking up little household messes, but this is always a HUGE risk. That risk being an entire house cleaning that could take hours...days even.

Walking around, stretching.

Meditating.

TV, but this is never a quickie. I get sucked, zoned, seduced, all of it.

Upload photos to flickr....

read the latest College English

Tonight I'm going to an WNBA game:
Phoenix @ Detroit Preseason
Pepsi Arena - Albany, NY
That should be a fun break.

My legs are still weak from the spider....

abstract

The Dialogic Writing Classroom

In University in Ruins, Bill Readings calls for a “teaching scene” based on dialogism as opposed to dialogue. This idea of dialogism, borrowed from Mikail Bakhtin, has potential to open up space for, what I call, a critical critical pedagogy and for responding to Amy Lee’s assertion that “critical pedagogy foregrounds the teacher or educator…. The students’ role is largely ignored” (Composing Critical Pedagogies 7). What if composition studies were to take seriously Readings’ concept of Thought, which is “thinking together” as a “dissensual process”? If critical pedagogy devotes itself to a liberatory classroom space that works to recognize and read critically the social and material conditions out of which its work is produced, it might do well to consider these “ruins” Readings describes as the University in which the critical pedagogue’s writing classroom is situated.


um...now i just have to write the paper. i feel clueless as to how to even begin.


In other news...
I have a job interview at a community college on the 28th. My first interview. I'm nervous as hell, but trying to see it as simply gaining experience, as I'm not even "on the market" yet (officially). It's for a full-time tenure track position. I'd certainly be thrilled to get it, as I wouldn't have to leave the area, and therefore wouldn't have to leave my partner. The thought of a future long-distance relationship is simply scary to me, though I know there is a good chance we'll end up in that predicament. Ah...the life of an academic is simply so glamorous:)

if things weren't bad enough...

So I am going through this really rough patch in my life. *Really rough*

So this morning--on the verge of tears and little sleep--I go to the Dunkin' Donuts to get a coffee and a bagel to force feed myself, as I have a tennis match at noon and need some sustenance but really do NOT feel like eating. As usual it is a mob scene. I'm trying to turn left off of Lark Street and into the parking lot. I let two cars out and then decide it should be my turn to pull in. I get about a quarter of D's car pulled into the opening of the lot (with the other 3/4 hanging out into Lark St.), and this guy in an enormous red truck (I know NOTHING about cars) pulls through the parking lot and cuts me off, blocks my way, and nearly hits the front end of Ds car (if I thought things were bad now...). So I say, "What the f--k? Did you not see me here? F--ker." And then neatly flip him off. As I pull into the parking spot, I see him back up in his big ole red truck...and I'm like uh-oh. When emerge from the car, he says, "Why do you have to go flipping people the bird?" I can't remember what my answer was. He then goes on to explain that it was a big cluster in the parking lot and he was simply trying to "do the right thing" and get out of the way (only--I did not add--he moved directly into MY way). Then he says, "It's Sunday." And for a moment I feel horrible. He's right. I was not raised to flip people off on Sundays. But then I thought, well if it was Thursday would that really be better? I mean, come on, buddy. So then he tells me that he wasn't even getting coffee, and there I go flipping him the bird. And I'm wondering WHY is he in the flipping Dunkin' Donuts' parking lot that is a huge cluster f--k on a Sunday morning, if he doesn't need coffee!?!? THEN he informs me that he's a minister and I just flipped him off on a Sunday. So, I say, "I'm sorry." Then I say, "I guess I'm going to straight to hell now." Then he tells me I just need to calm down. Just calm down he says. I think he is trying to say go in peace and don't be mean to people. I tell him that if he had my life, he would not be calm. Then, I just say, "Sorry." And leave.

But the whole episode is following me around. I have this strange compulsion to drive around town and look for his truck, and ask him a bunch of questions and fight with him some more. Because I *always* have to be right. And that problem is what got my life in such a mess, so I shouldn't drive around town looking for that "minister." But, if he's a minister, why did he have orange cones in the back of his truck? And, just because he's minister, does he get the special privilege of not getting flipped off when he cuts someone off? And, why, am I spending my time wondering these things???

getting on a blogging-roll?

What?? I cannot have had this blog since 2004. It's embarrassing. What little and ill use I've made of it. But I'm scared of commitment. So to sit here and say I'm going to start blogging voraciously and with great consistency is an impossibility.

Goals for "Spring" Break:
1. Write my paper for the UAlbany Graduate Student Conference
2. Grade three stacks of papers.
3. Revise my prospectus.
4. Take care of my summer textbook order.

Can this really be my life???

the political as expressivism

It is interesting that on the day I left Laura’s office reconsidering the use of personal writing (in the classroom) as political, I opened up the latest College English to find Timothy Barnett’s article ” “Politicizing the Personal: Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, and Some Thoughts on the Limits of Critical Literacy”. Although I must admit that it did not renew my hope in personal writing in the way I was hoping for. It is funny because I keep thinking to write “expressivism” in all the places where I’ve written personal writing. And it’s funny that Barnett rarely, if ever, uses the word expressivism in his piece. Instead he equates personal writing (as political) with the tenets of critical pedagogy. I don’t understand this as one of the goals of critical pedagogy per se.

He begins the article: “The idea that ‘the personal is political’ is both a commonplace in composition studies and something we have not yet fully theorized” (356). I am all for fully—or even partially--theorizing the idea of personal/political writing in composition, but I don’t see Barnett as having achieved this goal by the end of this essay. Instead, it seems to be a standard, overused defense of personal writing as valuable in a political way. Granted, he does suggest that both critiques of and arguments for the personal seem to miss “the deep links between personal writing and social critique” (356). And he acknowledges the critique of the personal as being too focused on the individual. Barnett responds to these arguments by saying they undermine “some basic tenets of critical pedagogy” (356). And then writes, “From the viewpoint of critical pedagogy then, personal writing can help students understand personal lives as linked to and reflective of social and political norms.” He accuses critical pedagogues as not fully exploring “a critical pedagogy tied to personal experience.” I guess that this then accounts for my confusion over whether or not this is part of a critical pedagogy, but to me it seems as though Barnett is forcing critical pedagogy to merge with expressivism in order to create an argument in favor of expressivism that somehow fits into “today’s” composition theory after a number of years of critique of expressivism.

Barnett does seem to make a critical pedagogy “move” when he compares/equates his students to Richard Wright and Frederick Douglass (instead of Brazilian peasants—let’s say).

The center of Barnett’s argument is that we need to understand the personal “as necessarily linked to the political” (357), and I tend to agree that it is. But, in my mind, the goal of critical pedagogy would be to have students make that move—that connection to the political within or maybe in response to (analysis of) their own/personal writing. With Barnett’s student, “Heather,” we never see this move. It begins and ends on “Heather” in a seeming celebration of the therapeutic effects of writing, which only further fuels the critiques of the personal as focused on the individual with a romanticized notion of individuality/subjectivity—the autonomous subject. I get that all of Heather’s writing, as a part of Heather herself, is socially constructed. But without the “unveiling” of that construction, I’m not sure I see how this fits into the framework of critical pedagogy.

I am left thinking that maybe Barnett is right—maybe critical pedagogues haven’t given enough thought to personal writing—but maybe that isn’t their goal.

Readings' critique of critical pedagogy

Although Readings only mentions critical pedagogy once in the entirety of University in Ruins, I believe his various critiques of what he describes as “the scene of teaching” can be applied to critical pedagogy and much of rhet/comp pedagogy as well. So while Readings doesn’t offer up the following critique in direct reference to critical pedagogy, I am using his arguments as my “lens.”

Readings’ critique of critical pedagogy, though brief, shares similarities with other charges lodged against this particular classroom method—that critical pedagogy is simply a replacement of the professor with the student—an “inversion of the hierarchy so that the students embody the real University” (163). But while the argument may seem redundant, the how and why of how he got to this critique is important, and it is especially important for (the future of) critical pedagogy to take into account.

Readings is of course addressing a specifically bureaucratic university—one he deems as a potentially transnational corporation. He is residing in this “ruined” university as he searches for a “resistance to the discourse of excellence,” and he finds this potential for resistance “in the scene of teaching” (150). As critical pedagogy and much of composition theory dedicate themselves to this scene he describes, I find it especially important that we take into account his arguments. He goes on to argue that this potential can be realized through the decentering of teaching: “By the decentering of the pedagogic situation I mean to insist that teaching is not best understood from the point of view of a sovereign subject that takes itself to be the sole guarantor of the meaning of that process…” (153). Based on this definition, it would seem that critical pedagogy would have this decentering potential—that it is in fact based on this potential (the decentering of teacher as authority), but Readings doesn’t stop there: “Neither the administrator taking the system in hand, nor the professor taking the student in hand, nor the student taking him- or herself in hand will do the trick” (emphasis mine 153). With much of critical pedagogy devoted to the idea of students taking themselves in hand, it would seem, that if we buy Readings’ arguments, critical pedagogy can be problematic and not entirely effective when it comes to resisting “the discourse of excellence.” So that pedagogy is not about creating a resisting or “oppositional subject;” but rather it is about thinking “beside each other and beside ourselves, is to explore an open network of obligations that keeps the question of meaning open as locus of debate” (165).

Readings addresses three pedagogic pitfalls—the second of which can to attributed to critical pedagogy: “the demagogic mode”—“the students’ autonomy is assumed as an a priori given, is asserted from the beginning as the unrecognized condition of possibility of education. Students have the autonomy to decide what it is they know, what it is they should or should not learn…” (157). So while the movement away from expressivism within rhet/comp has often been based on the critique of expressivism’s promotion of the autonomous self, I argue that the self-reproduction of that autonomy is problematically ever present within critical pedagogy as well. This privileging of the autonomous self did not meet its end with the movements away from expressivism; the 1980s social turn in composition also allowed/s for this belief in self-autonomy.

“In place of the lure of autonomy…I want to insist that pedagogy is a relation, a network of obligation…” (Readings 158); so while critical pedagogy seeks potential liberation and freedom from the exploitative structures of society, Readings puts pressure on the necessity of obligation within a specifically bureaucratic University. He sees this freedom/liberation—the myth of the truth setting us free—as a freedom from responsibility to each other. The next step that Readings tackles is to situate this responsibility and network obligations not in a community of consensus, but one of dissensus. In other words, in a community that avoids appeals to nostalgia and a romanticized version of community—“where thinking is a shared process without identity or unity”(192). Certainly this seems to be another idea relevant to composition pedagogy in its own appeals to classroom community through workshop groups, collaborative projects, and peer review. I believe that various composition pedagogies/theories can make better use of Readings’ argument for “dialogism rather than dialogue” (192). In what ways does critical pedagogy in its constant working out of teacher/student relationship with an eye toward egalitarianism turn a blind eye toward the possible use of difference and dissensus? How can we “think beside each other” without simply inverting the classroom hierarchy (teacher/student to student/teacher) as critical pedagogy might be prone to do?

CFP: "Changing the Subject: Poeisis, Praxis, and Theoria in the Humanities"

> Call for Panels and Papers: Deadline 3/1/06
>
> The English Graduate Student Organization (EGSO) of the University
> at Albany, SUNY announces its annual graduate student conference
> Saturday April 22 and Sunday 23, 2006:
>
> Changing the Subject: Poeisis, Praxis, and Theoria in the Humanities
>
> Robert Scholes is the Keynote Speaker, presenting a paper titled
> "Changing the Subject: Periodical Studies"
>
> Call for Papers and Panels: Praxis
> The Praxis and Pedagogy division of UAlbany’s Graduate Conference
> invites proposals for papers and panels that consider the
> intersections of theory and practice in our pedagogical approaches and
> in our roles as intellectuals.
>
> Karl Marx defined PRAXIS as "revolutionary, critical-practical
> activity," asserting, "The philosophers have only interpreted the
> world…the point is to change it." A substantial line of
> thought—including Freire, Giroux, hooks—has argued that teaching is an
> act and the classroom a space where social change can take place
> through a politics of resistance and social critique. The word has
> become so affiliated with the teaching profession that the national
> system of standardized tests for individuals becoming school teachers
> is called PRAXIS.
>
> Why is pedagogy almost exclusively linked with the field of rhetoric
> and composition? Why is pedagogy, and therefore the field of rhetoric
> and composition, so commonly affiliated with the concept of PRAXIS?
> What other forms of PRAXIS are alive and well in and around the
> academy? Is the classroom still, or perhaps more than ever, a site for
> "revolutionary, critical-practical activity?" As one of the few
> locales where strangers gather together regularly, is it necessary to
> rethink the classroom in terms of presence and embodiment, as a place
> where the "public" comes "inside" the university? What is the
> reciprocal, then, of the teacher leaving the university? How does she
> find or shape her public there?
>
> We welcome panels as well as individual papers/presentations. Topics
> can include:
> the status and role(s) of the public intellectual
> the division between the teaching of reading literature and writing
> development of an academic discourse quite separate from "everyday"
> writing and speech
> forms of action valued and/or overlooked in the academy
> curriculum and course design as practice
> classroom as a public space
> effects of corporatization on pedagogical practices
> effects of theory on the teaching of literature
> status of speech in the classroom
> online classes and universities
> theory out of practice
> effects of the poststructural turn toward writing/language on
> concepts of public speaking and teaching
> exploration of institutionalized boundaries between
> artist/academic/activist
> Please submit a 250-400 word proposal for papers and/panels by
> March 1, 2006 to Jennifer Marlow and Tara Needham at
> egsoalbany@yahoo.com.
> For more information visit:
> http://www.albany.edu/english/grad_conference_06/
>

Sidonie Smith lecture

On Thursday night I attended a Sidonie Smith lecture at the College of St. Rose. She called the presentation, "Victims, Perpetrators, Beneficiaries: Storytelling Stances in Human Rights Campaigns." Throughout the lecture she constantly complicated the proximity of (and roles of) victim, perpetrator, and beneficiary. She used three South African "narratives" as examples: the Winnie Mandela trials, A Human Being Died that Night, and Country of my Skull by Antjie Krog.

During the Q&A the conversation turned to prison narratives. John Edgar Wideman's introduction to Mumia Abu Jamal's Live from Death Row was discussed because it addresses the idea of prison narratives so often becoming neo-slave narratives. Wideman attributes both Abu Jamal's success, as well the the controversey and fear surrounding him, to the fact that his writing doesn't do this.

Zarvarzadeh on Pleasure and Crisis 1

Mas’ud Zavarzadeh’s 1994 “article,” “The Pedagogy of Pleasure 2: The Me-In-Crisis” is both a rant against the idea of the personal and an urgent plea for students (and scholars) to engage in a “rigorous critique of their situational in history” through ideology critique (and rigorous intellectual work, producing scientific knowledge). Zavarzadeh is vehemently opposed to the idea of the individual and strongly in favor of collective; he’s against experience and for science/knowledge; he’s against “talk” and for “reading.” In other words, Zarvarzadeh defines subjectivity as historical and class-founded, as opposed to subjectivity as individualism. At this point, I am with Zavarzadeh. We are on the same page. But Zavarzadeh takes this difference in subject formation and uses is as a jumping off point to rail against experience--seeing experience as used only to illustrate difference and thereby perpetuate the myth of the individual as distinct from others (as the “me’s” experience is not the same as the next “me’s” experience). Here he argues that experience’s “main political outcome is to mystify the historicity and class-founded nature of subjectivity.” This is because experience focuses on effects (according to Zarvarzadeh) and obscures causes: “causes have to be KNOWN through CONCEPTS.” In other words, we can’t KNOW anything through experience. Power must be theorized, not “talked” about.

This stance leads him to critique feminism and feminist pedagogy, which he describes as anti-intellectual. His goal of course here (and he as much as admits this at the end of his “article”) is to antagonize, and he does it well, but while Zavarzadeh is busy critiquing students, scholars, feminists, etc. for ignoring and/or obscuring and/or failing to recognize causes and their own situational, he fails to acknowledge the ways in which the types of knowledge and idea of CONCEPTS/CONCEPTUALITY that he calls upon are training in patriarchal modes of thinking, learning, speaking, and writing. He fails to question the ways in which the formal paper that he assigned also protects the privileges of the bourgeois subject (something he accuses his student of doing)--the ways in which a formal paper (presumably written in formal academic discourse) fails to “confront the historical and socio-economic structures of the subject in history.”

language/class/language

I haven’t finished reading Julie Lindquist’s A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working Class Bar, so I may be jumping ahead of myself, trying to question points she is making that she later in the book addresses, complicates, and/or answers.

Still, I have questions:

On page 74 Lindquist states that “Smokehouse ideologies of class are highly narratizable, yet stubbornly unnamable.” (Background: The Smokehouse is the working class bar, which Lindquist is referring to in the title. She works there as a bartender while attaining her doctorate. In part, Lindquist is looking at the ways in which the Smokehouse regulars—“Smokehousers”—express and/or interpret class/experience through their daily discussions.) What ideologies of class are nameable? At numerous points in the book (so far), Lindquist comes to the (seemingly surprising, to her) conclusion that the Smokehousers lack a language for class, yet don’t most people? Not just working class, bar regulars…?

I am constantly running into this predicament—not having a language with which to speak about class, not having a framework for the unsatisfactory language that we do have. Because, from the folk who frequent the Smokehouse to the students who sit in our classrooms—the people don’t read class theory.

reading 2: pleasure-in-crisis

So far this summer I have not read a single book "for pleasure." Today I went to the town library to grade papers, while sucking in the AC, and I took out a book: The Book of Salt. I think I deserve to read it.

Earlier in the summer I started reading Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s. I wasn't terribly impressed with the writing, but I was intrigued enough to keep reading, so I would like to finish it.

I think that one or both of these two books should join me on my three day bike adventure next week. In addition, I'll bring along Zavarzadeh's "The Pedagogy of Pleasure 2: The Me-in-Crisis." Not sure what else from the academic world will come along.

Maybe the book I'm (I've been) currently reading--the one that really does not seem to apply to my project in any way (I could say this about A LOT of the things I'm reading right now--e.g. Althusser)--A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working Class Bar.

reading

Currently *should*/could/can be reading:

The German Ideology
Capital
Marx/Engels Reader
Fulkerson article, "Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century" in CCC
A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working Class Bar
Althusser on ideology
Mapping Ideology
Critical Dialogues (Stuart Hall/ed. by David Morley)

I've been spending a lot of time lately avoiding blogging. I'm not sure why. I spend a lot of time being afraid of blogging. It is a bit silly. I make a lot of "blog this" notes to myself in margins and on post-its, but then I never actually bring the material to the "page."

As I logged in today, for the first time in a long time, I lingered over my screenname because ofthis, after reading BitchPhD's response to the case. As a "former" Vermont resident (my heart still resides there) and friend to a number of Middlebury graduates, it makes me feel shame and sadness to read this. For me, the only drawback to Vermont is the lack of diversity. Yet I've always loved the (predominantly) live and let live mentality, along with the progressive politics and (mostly) foward-thinking residents. Reading about this Middelbury case puts a damper on some of those feelings.

So I'm prepping my summer course, 300Z Expository Writing, a class I have not taught before (at least not at this institution or this level). Creating new curriculum/prepping is always one of my favorite activities, but I also end up filled with this strange mixture of excitement and trepidation. Still, as I'm working on the prep it consumes me. I fall asleep creating assignments, shifting readings around, and thinking of discussion topics.

Here is my reading list so far:

300Z Course Packet Contents

Introduction from The Art of Truth

“How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien

The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr

Kathryn Harrison from The Kiss

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Live from Death Row

John Edgar Wideman: Brothers and Keepers

Selections from A Place to Stand by Julie Lindquist

Daniel Miller “Making Love in Supermarkets”

Barbara Ehrenreich Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

George Orwell: “Politics and the English Language”

Excerpts from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well

Hmmmm...well, looking at it from this perspective, it doesn't seem entirely coherent, but there *is* much thought put into this. I hope it all comes together.
The course will begin with dicussions about dealing with the concept of "T/truth." That will be something we continually come back to throughout the six week course. Initially I am trying to cover writing about "self" (memoir); moving from there into writing about "other" (**I'm having trouble here with framing this/knowing what to call "it"--"other" seems like a loaded word to be using and I'm not sure it is saying exactly what I want it to say. Yet simply saying, write about somebody else, doesn't seem to work that well either). Finally, we'll do come cultural criticism/literary journalism. It is important for me to make it clear that these are not three distinct categories at all, and the readings I've chosen (for the most part) illustrate this "blurriness," "messiness" of genre and theme (etc.)--Brothers and Keepers does this particularly well.

which american city...?

>

American Cities That Best Fit You:

60% Washington, DC

55% San Diego

55% San Francisco

50% Austin

50% Boston

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

I found and snagged this quiz from/at culturecat.net

grading breaks

I need some good suggestions for what to do when taking a break from grading. I've tried reading through my fave blogs, but my mind is too tired even for that. I check e-mail, but never have enough words left nor energy to respond.

I guess the cleaning kind of stuff is good. I have been doing laundry, and so far no colors have bled, the socks still seem to match, etc. Dishes I can handle. Eating chocolate chip cookies seems effective too....

blogging interview

Today my ex/friend, Kate, is coming to interview me about my blog/blogging. It's funny because I was trying to explain to her that blogging, at this point, can be/has been theorized, "scholarized," etc. There is even "blogese" and so on. I am just your basic blogger. I don't necessarily think about it (although I might like to); I just "do it." Anyhow, it'll be fun to just blather on about my 'lil blog (that could). Besides she needs to edit the interview down to a thirty second sound-bite, so there won't be a lot of room for heavy theorizing.

It's very interesting to me, though, that Kate, who is highly educated (has more degrees and partial degrees than most people I know) and is fairly handy with computers, only recently (in the past couple of weeks) learned what a blog was. And last night, on the phone, my brother, who is a computer consultant, said, "Now a blog...that's like a daily journal kept on the web????" It just bewilders me to some extent, because, in my head, blogs had their heyday and have even become the object of ridicule....

I wish I could interview Kate about *how* you can be an active part of this computerized world (she has, afterall, done the online dating thing, does research on the web, and has two active e-mail accounts that she checks 25 times a day) and not know what a blog is.

I'm so confused....

TV consumption

some days (particularly saturdays) i just need to take in hours of mindless TV. it isn't until i can literally feel the brain cells start to fall away that i will get up and start my day. so far today i've watched:

-tennis: Kim Clijsters v. Svetlana Kuznetsova the J&S Cup Warsaw, Poland.
-Vh1's top 20 countdown
-the last 15 minutes of Shallow Grave
-a few minutes of each morning show
-a few minutes of the Travel Channel's Haunted London
-a few minutes of MTv's Made

it feels like it has been years since i've actually seen music videos--more than one in a row, in their entirety. maybe that is because they don't really show them anymore. it scares me a little--how sucked-in i am by the frangmented images and flashing lights. i can just stare at the screen--slightly comatose. plus i've been so detached and distanced from what is popular in pop music these days. i feel as though it used to be the center of my universe for so long...it feels a little weird to not know who the killers are. or not to know that gwen stefani ain't a hollaback girl.... maybe i'm better off....

now i really need to "get serious." it is the end of the semester, after all.

postponed exam girl:(

So it is official. I met with my committee yesterday. I won't be taking my exams in two weeks as originally planned. I am just not ready. I want to write and articulate more about this lack of "readiness," but for now I just need to retreat a bit. I need to take care of some grading and go see FeverPitch. Then maybe I can start to sort things out...here and elsewhere.